Ratts
by Brochelle
Summary: This job was his way up the ladder. This was how he'd make a name for himself. But, there were some things he missed. Canonically incorrect in several places/time line all messed up. Written on a whim.


_he dreams of stars_

The first night he spent in Aperture's Employee Housing Unit, room one thousand and twenty -five, he noticed two things that startled him particularly. One was how silent the room was. The clock on the wall didn't tick - didn't make a noise though the slim dark hands moved relentlessly over its pale face - and there was the way the bed didn't squeak, even when he tossed and turned all night. He couldn't even hear Aperture's pulse - the generators, the engines, the wind turbines, the vats of melted, mysterious metals, were all silenced in this room - even though he knew that the housing units were close to the guts of the facility. The room swallowed up all the sound and spat out silence, and Doug hated it.

The second thing that startled him particularly was how dark it was. The housing unit was buried deep underground, far from the prying eyes of the media, who naturally assumed that Aperture's dutiful engineering army lived far from the facility, or at least in one of the higher tiers of the facility's infrastructure. Which was partially true - many of the more "vital" scientists lived in glass apartments on the surface level, where they kept their space clean and pristine for the reporters and the cameras and the U.S. Department of Labor. But here - in the bowels of a very old, very forbidding facility, which probably dated back to the forties - no sunlight could be seen. There were the sterile phosphorescent light, which dyed everything a washed-out blue, but as soon as those were turned off it seemed that the very sun had gone out. As per company policy, the hall's lights went out at nine every night, and were switched back on at six the next morning. Individual lamps in the housing units could be turned on, but only as late as eleven. It was terrifying, because it only reminded Doug that Aperture was God.

Nine years later, Doug Rattmann had yet to get over neither the silence nor the darkness. The vastness of Aperture often felt like it was smothering him, cornering him, but in the late hours of night he pressed his ear to the coarse carpet, and strained to hear its heartbeat.

It was growing closer to midnight, but Doug was no closer to falling asleep. He was staring straight up and hoping what he was looking at was the ceiling. He couldn't actually see it, not when it was this dark, but he searched and searched for the weird, gritty texture that made up the ceiling panels.

He rolled away from the ceiling and faced the clock on the opposite wall. The face was aglow, a soft, gentle blue, but the numbers weren't marked. Contrary to their convoluted titles - Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, for example - the designers preferred a minimalist flavor to their popularized areas. The waiting room, around two hundred feet above his head, on the surface, was designed to be similar to the sixties' hospital waiting rooms. The company president even allowed his office - a carefully organized time capsule, last time Doug had been in there - to be redesigned in favor of the new company look.

Supposedly it instilled a feeling of promise and sureness, since the look leaned in favor of a sleek and chrome, futuristic tone.

To Doug, it all looked like a doctor's office. It looked like the room you euthanized a pet in - all cool colors and modern furnishings, nothing too fancy, just to keep you calm. Doug hated it too.

The clock was quiet as it cut away minutes, sloughing through time to reach the apex of the night. The seconds hand didn't stagger over the face of the clock. It moved at the same pace, silently, like a fish through water. It reminded Doug of a cat he had when he grew up; an angry, haughty old thing that they had to get a bell for, because otherwise they couldn't hear him approaching. And that in itself was scary because the cruel thing liked to sneak up on Doug. It liked to sit quietly behind him and wait for him to turn (which he always did; it's hard to mask the feeling you give someone when you stare too long, too intently) and he would jump, and the cat would stroll away knowing that it had done its work well.

Doug didn't particularly like that cat, but he had been unreasonably upset when it died.

Aperture held its nonexistent breath as the clock struck midnight.

Doug sighed, and the irritating noise hung in the air. He rolled over again and lay on his stomach, his arms spread at an angle where the greater length of his arms hung over the edge of the mattress. He stuffed his face into the lumpy, flat pillow and huffed again.

It didn't quite yield the response he was expecting, so he twisted around again until he faced the ceiling. Loudly, he said "ugh".

The sudden movement made his heart beat in his ears, and Doug was grateful for the noise. The thin blankets on the cot clung to his legs so he kicked them off and relished in the sudden cool air he felt on his toes. At least the housing units weren't hot, he reasoned. They weren't cold, either. Company policy kept everything at a balmy seventy degrees, which was just perfect for Doug.

Though after a while, he yearned for a cold winter wind. Or maybe even that blast of hot, summer air, after stepping out of an air conditioned car.

As Doug stared at the ceiling, he thought of the sky after it rained. He thought of the sky in April; all blue and gaping and full of promise. He thought of the sky at night, and how the stars ate up his worry and concerns. He thought of the constellations and the planets he would never see. The thought scared and delighted him at the same time. Doug realized why he didn't like the dark, and why he didn't like the darkness.

He didn't belong underground. He yearned for the surface.

Charlotte liked to talk about her boyfriend, Paul never shut up about his farm "back home", and Charisse discussed the dynamics of a machine that no one could understand, because no one was in her department. Andrew always got red in the face when someone brought up something he disagreed with (which happened to be a lot of things) and Samantha from Accounting always had to talk him down. There was the "love birds" - a gangly young fire-haired kid and a handsome girl who worked the late shift in Security - whose contribution to the lunch time chatter was usually donated by the young man, spoked in a frenzied, English accent and with little to do with the current conversation topic.

Today the young man was complaining about the lunch hour. "Why must it be we only get, like, a half hour to eat?" he exclaimed, angrily gesturing at the room. "That's hardly enough to finish up this whole bloody sandwich! They run this place like a damn prison."

Andrew had been fostering a look of poorly-concealed anger for the past three minutes, and he now tossed down his own sandwich.

"Maybe if you didn't bother runnin' yer gob every second of the day, you'd actually finish yer goddamn meal," he growled. Samantha placed a slim, pale hand on Andrew's back, and the dangerous blush that had been darkening his ruddy cheeks faded.

"I'm just sayin'," he added. The man turned back to his meal and delved back into the sandwich with renewed vigor. "Y'know."

The handsome woman from Security laughed gently, and Doug smiled. She had a nice laugh - it sparkled and clinked like fine china. The corners of her pale eyes creased when she smiled and she threw her head back, which made the loose ponytail shift restlessly. Doug caught himself staring and looked back at his cold soup, but listened intently for the woman to speak.

"He's right, Wheatley," she said, her previous mirth coloring her tone. "Why don't you eat and we'll complain about this when we're not on a schedule, alright?"

Wheatley looked peeved, but took a bite of his sandwich nonetheless, albeit reluctantly. The way he worked his jaw to chew his food implied that it was what powered his thought; you could almost see the cogs in his head twisting as he chewed. Rattmann smirked to himself and ate some of his soup. It slid down his throat thickly, and with a grimace Rattmann decided he was done with soup.

"Where you going, Stick?" Paul suddenly announced. Stick was his nickname for Rattmann, who had appeared pale and scrawny and wearing ill-fitting basketball shorts on the day of Aperture's staff basketball day, versus Black Mesa's security team. Thanks to his skinny legs, his name around the cafeteria was Stick. Doug quietly wondered if Paul remembered his real name.

"Not hungry," he muttered. He forced a smile.

"Oh, you got the soup?" said Charlotte. "My boyfriend warned me not to pick up the soup for lunch. Like eating mud, he said. Mud and-"

"Char, really, I'm good," Doug interrupted.

"I'm just saying. Do you want me to grab somethin' else for you?"

Charlotte's voice was laden with a violently strong Cockney accent, and the tone in which she offered to buy him lunch made it more of a threat than an suggestion. Doug managed a shrug and a mumble before he turned tail and fled the group, and the handsome woman, behind him.

"We simply can't do that."

Doug could feel raw panic welling up in his chest, and fought against it, trying to mirror Caroline's careful and controlled expression. The older woman sat stoically with her hands clasped over the office desk and the scattered papers. She wore pale colors, and her skin was ashen, and her eyes were washed-out and tucked above discolored bags. Her dark hair was pulled up into a stiff bun.

Her brow knotted in brief concentration, and wrinkles sketched across her forehead.

"Why not?" Doug demanded. His voice cracked dangerously, so he quickly shut up and leaned back in the uncomfortable armchair. Nervously, he tugged at the frayed fabric on the chair. "I-I'm doing nothing down there, I could be more help on the alpha floors."

Caroline sighed, rolling her eyes as she tucked a stray hair behind her ear. The pearl earrings caught the golden light from the desk lamp and sparkled viciously. "Mr. Rattmann," she drawled. "We don't have any extra positions on any of the alpha floors. All significant scientific activity is directed toward the Genetic Lifeform and Disc-Operated System. There are plenty of kinks to sort out before we get her up and running."

Doug felt his breath catch.

"'Her'?"

Caroline looked embarrassed, and hid it by digging through the piles of paper on her desk. She picked up a receipt and stared at it absently, before throwing it back down on the desk and scowling.

"I said 'it'. And unless someone... I don't know, spontaneously combusts, you'll be working on the delta floor until otherwise stated. We can't afford to have unnecessary items in Aperture Science."

"I-"

"That is final, Mr. Rattmann."

Doug bit his lip and fell quiet.

He bid Caroline good bye, and left her office, beginning the long trek back to the omega levels, to the housing units. The warm colors of the upper tiers paled into the heavy phosphorescent blues and silvers, and the smooth eggshell white paneling gave way to dull browns and grays as he descended. The housing units - hundreds of detachable boxes, all linked together, and accessible by the solid catwalks suspended over thin air - were situated in one of the old testing spheres. The sphere had been renovated so that its materials were no longer poisonous to humans - God, what other place in the world would he have to have a qualifier like that - but it reeked of unknowable fumes. The whole structure creaked like an old house, and at night some of the old recordings in the other spheres were activated by passing birds and rodents. Doug remembered falling asleep to the eerie lullaby of Cave Johnson's enthusiastic speeches, all muffled by rusted steel beams and metal panels, and occasionally the chirpy exclamations of the young, happy, Caroline.

He fiddled with the blueprints he'd been assigned to elaborate upon, but before long he was just staring at the dog-eared paper and tugging at his hair. He turned off his desk lamp and climbed into bed, but he wasn't tired. He stared at the ceiling in the dark and the silence and wished for the stars again. This job had held so much promise for him - but here he was, locked up underground and forbidden to see the surface again. Doug thought of the handsome woman and of Charlotte, and of the two Carolines he had met. He thought of the GLaDOS project and he thought about the surface. He stared at the ceiling in the dark and strained to see the stars and he thought he could see them, just barely, though of course it was just his imagination. He quietly chastised his foolishness and rolled over in bed, staring at the clock on the wall. He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble, and tried to remember if he had any shaving cream left.

He fell asleep thinking of mirrors and shaving cream.

The next morning, he received a call from Caroline herself. Someone had apparently inhaled some sort of gas while working on the GLaDOS project, and they needed a replacement.

* * *

**A/N: Written on a whim. A few errors, as I'm sure you've noticed.**


End file.
